


Shade of the Evening

by catherineflowers



Series: The Hippie and the Hitchhiker [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A honeymoon suite, Anal Fingering, Beach Sex, F/M, Face-Sitting, Fluff and Angst, Hitchhiking, Jaime's a hippie, Modern AU, Pod is a dog, Recreational Drug Use, Shower Sex, Summer Vacation, Table Sex, lots of smut, white person in locs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: Jaime Lannister, living the hippie dream in Qarth, picks up hitchhiking holidaymaker Brienne O'Tarth and her massive dog Podrick. It ends up being quite the encounter!Written for auntie_social for the JB Fic Exchange 2020.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: The Hippie and the Hitchhiker [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900624
Comments: 78
Kudos: 220
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	1. The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [auntie_social](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auntie_social/gifts).



> Written for auntie_social's prompt for Jaime and Brienne on vacation. Sorry it's not Disneyland, I've never been there and I didn't think I could write it convincingly! But ... Brienne does get to ride the Lion King so ....
> 
> There will be more touristy things in chapter 2!

“This is dangerous, you know.”

The woman looked up at him from her lap, the first time she had done so since he’d picked her up twenty minutes ago. “What is?”

“Hitchhiking across the Red Wastes. Accepting a lift from a total stranger.”

“I’ve got Podrick,” she shrugged.

“That you have.” In the back seat, her huge dog blinked. “What is he, a sort of Alsatian?”

She shook her head. “A Leonberger.”

“He’s _big_.”

She shrugged. “So am I.”

Well, he hadn’t liked to mention it. But, well – there was no denying it. When he’d spotted her by the side of the road, he hadn’t been sure she was even a woman. She stood well over six feet tall, and the legs that poked out the bottom of her thin blue sundress were well-muscled and unshaven. She didn’t have tits to speak of, either.

Not that he’d looked. Not on purpose, anyway. She’d bent over to pick up her big wheelie suitcase when he’d opened the car boot for her, and her dress had gaped open at the front. He’d seen that she wore one of those little bralettes underneath, and she probably didn’t even need that.

“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly, breaking him out of his reverie.

“Lion.”

“Lion?!” she scoffed. Shook her head. “I don’t think so. What does your mother call you?”

He laughed. “I don’t look like a Lion to you?”

“You look like someone who’s trying to be a Lion.” From anyone else, that would have been a shitty thing to say. But there was no bitchy tone to her voice, no sneer. It sounded like an observation rather than a criticism. She was blunt, and he liked that.

She wasn’t wrong, he supposed. He looked like one of those Westerosi who came out here looking to drown himself in Qarth’s decadent drug culture. In his beat-up Beetle, his handmade tie-dyed shirt and with his tatty locs … she probably thought he was a total prat.

“I’m Brienne,” she said. “Brienne O’Tarth.”

“Tarth, eh?” he grinned “Like the island?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. Well … Jaime. My mother called me Jaime.”

“You don’t look much like a Jaime either.”

He shrugged. “Don’t much feel like one, some days.”

He wriggled in his seat to steady the steering wheel between his knee and his stump. Reached over himself to shift the gear lever with his left hand.

She looked a bit alarmed. “Don’t you think maybe you should be driving an automatic?”

He shrugged. “I can drive this fine.”

“So you … live in Qarth?”

“On the beach,” he told her. He looked over at her freckled skin – it was very, very white. “I’m guessing you don’t.”

“I’m on holiday.”

“With your dog?”

“It was meant to be with my husband.”

Husband? She didn’t have a ring.

“Oh. He … is he unwell?”

“No, he decided he didn’t want to be my husband, after all.”

Jaime swallowed. What the fuck was he meant to say to that?

“What … he … you … did he dump you?” He cringed even as the words came out of his mouth – sometimes he spoke without thinking and came off like a shitbag.

“Yes,” she said, quite matter-of-factly. “A week before the wedding.”

Jaime winced.

She shrugged. “It was a long-distance relationship. I think the reality was more than Ronnet could handle.”

 _Maybe it was the dog_ , he thought. But even so … what kind of an arsehole?

“So … was this meant to be your honeymoon?”

Brienne nodded. She had a smile on her face, a brave smile. A brave face. Jaime still didn’t know what to say.

“If I ever get back to Westeros, I’ll punch him for you,” he offered. “With my fake hand on – that thing’s heavy.”

Brienne laughed. “Don’t worry, I punched him myself.”

“Good for you!” Jaime couldn’t help but picture it – he bet this huge woman had a fantastic right hook. She clearly worked out a _lot_.

Podrick leaned over between the seats to lick Brienne’s cheek. She hugged his big doggy head and scratched behind his ears.

“I’ll probably have more fun with Podrick anyway,” she sighed. “It was probably for the best.”

They drove out of the desert as the sun went down, streaking the horizon in a watercolour wash of pinks and purples. The first petrol stations, the first shops, the first apartment blocks loomed over them, slowly turning to silhouettes and then flickering alive again as electric lights came on.

Jaime watched Brienne as she watched everything out of the open window, the warm desert wind blowing her untidy hair around her face. On the back seat, Podrick slept.

This wasn’t a beautiful way to come into Qarth, Jaime realised. She was a tourist – probably he should have gone the scenic route, through the mansions and the malls on the other side of town. Here garbage and sand and tumbleweed blew around the decaying houses, as lost as the people. Everyone they passed had blue lips. Dead eyes that had seen too much of the other side.

As they crossed the railway lines, Jaime’s Beetle began to smoke.

He pulled over into the parking lot of a deserted factory, got out and pretended he knew what he was looking at in the engine bay at the rear of the car. There was a lot of hissing—a lot of smoke. He burned his fingers. Cursed a lot.

“Can I help?” Brienne asked over his shoulder. It had grown cold since the sun went down, and she had her arms wrapped about herself.

“Are you a mechanic?” he asked.

“No. Just … if you need me to hold anything, or …”

Because he had one hand? “It does this a lot,” he answered, slamming the door on the engine bay shut. “It needs to cool down. It’ll start up sweet as a nut in the morning.”

“Oh,” she said, looking about them at the creeping dark.

“Sorry. I could walk you to the bus station?” he offered. “The hotels … most of the hotels are on the other side of town, still too far to walk. Which one are you staying in?”

“Hotel Gehane?”

“Oh, yeah, I know that one. Very nice – must have cost dickhead fiancé a pretty penny?”

“I paid for the hotel. He was supposed to pay for transport. Hire us a car.”

“Oh.” Well, that explained the hitchhiking.

“Maybe I should call a taxi? Or … is there one of those services you book by app here?”

Jaime shook his head. “I can’t recommend getting in a taxi. This part of town …”

She nodded. “Okay. Bus station it is.”

She went around the front of the Beetle and pulled her large, wheelie suitcase out of the boot. Slung her backpack on and whistled to Podrick. The massive dog trotted out of the car, yawning.

“Is it far away?” she asked as they walked through the all-but abandoned industrial estate.

“Not that far,” Jaime said. “I suppose about twenty minutes, walking.”

He’d sat on his cigarettes, he realised, pulling the crumpled packet out of the back pocket of his flares. Most of them were snapped, but he lit one anyway and offered Brienne the pack.

She shook her head. “So … how long have you lived here?” she asked.

“In Qarth? Nearly five years.”

“You’re from the Westerlands, right? You have that look.”

Jaime laughed. “Yeah. Casterly.”

Brienne raised both eyebrows but didn’t elaborate on whether that was a good or a bad thing.

“And I take it you really are from Tarth?”

Brienne shook her head. “Well, I _was_ , but … I’ve lived in the North for quite a while. In Winterfell. For work.”

“Oh, Gods!” Jaime exclaimed. “I’d want a damn good relocation package if my work forced me up to that frozen hellhole.”

Brienne smiled, but she looked away as she did. There was something … almost _shame_?

“What do you do?” he asked her, even more curious now. At first, he’d had her pegged as management – she seemed assertive enough, and smart, too. But there was also something of a loner about her, too – perhaps she was in statistics or IT or something nerdier.

“Security,” she mumbled.

“What – like … consulting?”

“No. Security. I’m a security guard in a shopping centre.”

“Really?! So you’re like … blue-collar?”

She went very red – somehow she seemed madder about this than she did about her broken engagement. “What do you live on out here in paradise? A trust fund?”

Jaime shut up. Looked away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to sound the way it did.”

She grunted.

“I made my own money,” he said after a moment. “Before my accident. I live on that, now.”

He saw Brienne’s eyes flick to the stump of his right hand. “What did you do?” she asked.

“A building fell on me,” he told her. He tried to laugh, make it sound humorous, but his voice sounded hollow. Empty. “Remember the big earthquake in King’s Landing? I was there, in the Baelor concert hall. A shitload of bricks fell on me. Crushed my hand to the point where they had no choice but to amputate.”

Brienne was silent, her big eyes even bigger now. “I-I meant what did you do for a living?”

“Oh.” He laughed again. Took a deep drag on his cigarette. Stamped it out under his sandal. “I was a concert violinist. A fucking brilliant one.”

“Really? Wow.”

“I studied at a conservatory from the age of six. Then eight years at the Marillion. Then … concerts, recitals, albums. All over the world. I was the best-selling classical musician ever, for a while.”

“Gods, you’re Jaime _Lannister_?”

“I _was_.”

She didn’t speak for a long moment, as they rounded the corner by a boarded-up auto workshop. “You still are.”

He held up his stump. “I’m really _not_. It’s not the same. I have an adapted bow, but …”

He couldn’t _feel_ it the way he used to. He was clumsy, the sound so _pejorative_. He felt like he was dying two dozen deaths when he listened to himself now.

“I’m sorry.”

Jaime shrugged. Talking about it was still as awkward as all the hells.

“I didn’t really follow classical music or anything,” she said in a small voice. “But I’d heard of you.”

He nodded. “Thanks.”

They walked the rest of the way to the bus station in silence, save for Pockrick’s heavy panting.

The place was brightly lit, and quite busy, full of night-shift workers headed for the hotels and bars and restaurants in the tourist part of town. They made their way through the throng, finding the right stop.

A bus pulled up after a few minutes, a battered, sandblasted old thing with a bow-chested old Summer Islander driving.

“You can’t bring that on here,” he told Brienne when she tried to board.

“What?”

“That dog.”

“What? Why?!”

“Lapdogs and guide dogs only.”

“But –“

“No exceptions.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“How do I know that thing’s under control? Looks like it could eat a man whole!”

Jaime laughed.

Brienne was incensed. “Podrick would _never_ –”

“Everyone says that about their dog,” the driver continued. “It’s always ‘he’s just being friendly’ when he’s trying to bite your face off.”

“I assure you …”

“Look. Madam?” He didn’t look entirely sure. “I’m on a schedule. All these people need to get to work. You’re not getting on the bus with that dog. So get off and let me get going.”

Brienne got off. The bus doors closed in her face, and she turned back to Jaime, her eyes burning with fury. “Big dogs are so misunderstood!”

Jaime laughed again.

“What am I going to do now?”

Jaime shrugged. “You’ll have to stay with me. We’ll hike back to the car in the morning, and I’ll give you a lift then.”

“Stay with you?”

“I’m a gentleman, I promise. And you have your big, scary, man-eating dog to protect you, right?”

She sighed. “All right. Thank you.”

“Not a problem.”

“Is it far to your house?” she asked.

“It’s a way along the beach,” Jaime told her.

He cut through the back streets, using several dark alleys and lanes that he would never have used at this time of night if he wasn’t with a giant dog and a giant woman. But they trudged most of the way along the all-but deserted beach. Nearer to the city centre, the beach would be full of tourists at this time of night, drunk and partying. Here it was quiet after sundown, which was just the way Jaime liked it.

Brienne’s wheeled suitcase proved to be a pain in the arse on the soft sand of course, so they took turns in carrying it by the handle, while Podrick bounded around them excitedly.

Wagging his tail, running around like a mad thing and finally splashing around in the surf until he was soaked, Podrick was in his element. As they approached Jaime’s place, he ran back to the two of them, shook his huge coat out and drenched both of them with seawater. Brienne scolded him, but she was laughing, too.

“Here we go …” Jaime said lugging the suitcase up the steps to the verandah and getting his keys out of his pocket.

“This is you?” Brienne asked. Her voice was somewhat incredulous.

“Not what you were expecting?” Jaime asked with a grin.

“Not at all. When you said ‘best-selling classical musician ever’, I thought …”

“You thought a mansion. Not so much a tumbledown shack on the beach without mains electricity, right?”

Brienne cleared her throat. “Well … yes.”

Jaime smiled – people’s reactions when they saw his living situation amused him more than he could say.

“But … I can see why you’d prefer this.”

“Really?” It was his turn to be surprised.

Brienne shrugged. “Not that I’ve ever been in one, but … a mansion seems like a lonely place to live by yourself. Especially after a life-changing accident.”

Jaime looked at his feet. Nodded slowly.

“I can see why you’d want to change everything. Change your look, change your name. Change your lifestyle.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly it,” he murmured.

The moon was reflected in her big blue eyes, and for a moment of madness, Jaime wanted her to embrace him. Pull him close and tell him everything would be all right. He turned quickly back to unlock his door.

Inside, he was pleased to see his generator was still running – that thing was more temperamental than his car these days. It meant he still had cold beer and edible food to offer her. He turned on the lights – they flickered for a minute, but they stayed on.

“Home sweet home,” he said with a grin.

Brienne came inside, with Podrick barrelling after her. Dumped her rucksack on the floor and wiped a hand across her sweaty forehead. She looked about at his ratty furniture, at his peeling wallpaper.

Podrick looked expectantly between the two of them, wagging his tail hard enough to bruise. Jaime ruffled his big head and dug around in the cupboard for his biggest saucepan. He filled it with water and put it on the floor by the fridge.

Podrick drank, greedily and messily, making happy woofing sounds as he did. He emptied the pan and nudged at Jaime’s legs for more.

“He must be hungry, too,” said Brienne as Jaime refilled the water.

She pulled her suitcase – the one with wheels they had lugged across three miles of beach – to the floor and unzipped it. Inside was nothing but a huge sack of dog chow and a bowl. Brienne unrolled the sack and tipped an enormous pile into the bowl, putting it down next to Podrick. He immediately started wolfing it down, his tail wagging even harder.

Brienne zipped the suitcase back up.

“Well, that’s him fed,” Jaime laughed. “How about us? Are you hungry?”

She nodded. “It’s been a long day.”

“Me too,” he said. Again, he had that strange urge to get close to her. To throw an arm around her or peck her on the cheek. Like they were buddies. Like they’d known each other for years.

He settled for passing her a beer from his fridge and leading her outside to get his little gas barbeque started. He waited for it to get going and then chucked some sausages and a couple of steaks on. She looked like the kind of woman who ate a lot of protein.

Brienne sat down on the beanchairs he’d slung on the verandah, looking faintly ridiculous with her long legs almost around her ears. She drank her beer and looked out at the dark sea, the moonlight and the myriad of stars.

She had nice eyes, he thought. Calm, for someone who had near-as-dammit been jilted at the altar.

Podrick ambled out and plonked himself beside her. Put his head on her lap. She scratched behind his ears as she drank and Jaime cooked.

“It’s beautiful here,” she whispered as he handed her food over. “I can see why you like it.”

Jaime lowered himself into the other beanbag, keeping his plate away from the suddenly-perked-up Podrick.

“I know it’s a touristy shithole,” he said. “No offence.”

She scoffed around a mouthful of sausage.

“But out here, this part of the beach … it _is_ beautiful. Quiet and peaceful. Listening to the waves, looking up at the stars, walking barefoot through the sand and letting myself get wild and ragged … Sometimes I can still feel what I used to feel when I played the violin.”

Her eyes were on his, full and sorrowful. Jaime looked away – he hadn’t meant to make her feel that way, he had meant it to sound tranquil and laid back. The perfect Qarth lifestyle.

“I don’t know,” he said, flustered at her gaze. “Probably that sounds like druggie bullshit.”

“You take drugs?” Brienne asked. Her voice little more than a whisper.

Jaime shrugged. He felt a bit awkward talking about it. “Sometimes. It’s kind of part of the lifestyle.”

“Shade of the Evening?”

“Look, I’m not some blue-lipped junkie, I just –”

“No. I mean … do you have any?”

Jaime stopped. Stunned into silence.

She fidgeted. “I could … pay?”

He shook his head. “I just use it … recreationally, you know? I’m not a dealer.”

Brienne let out a breath. “That’s all I want too. Recreational.”

“Have you ever taken it before?”

“No.” Her eyes were even wider now. “But I promised myself I’d try. While I’m here. You’re not the only one who needs a new life. New things.”

“It’s _weird_ ,” he warned. “The first time especially. They say it’s a glimpse into death, or looking outside the fourth dimension, or something. Some people think you can see the future.”

“What do _you_ see?”

He laughed. “Dead people, mostly. Dead things.”

“Like … zombies?” Brienne laughed, too. “I hope that’s _not_ the future.”

“Me too. What use is a one-handed violinist going to be in the zombie apocalypse?”

“You can cook sausages?” Brienne offered. “And you look pretty self-sufficient.”

“You’ll have to protect me,” he said. “You and Podrick. A security guard with a giant dog sounds like a good bet. You use a gun in your job?”

“A gun?! I’m a security guard in a shopping centre! Mostly it’s shoplifters. Kids, bored old ladies. The occasional pervert masturbating in the lingerie shop.”

“A gun would probably be overkill.”

“I should say it would.”

They grinned at each other, and Jaime got up. Nodded in the direction of the house.

“I’ll see what I can find,” he said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

His bed was only a mattress on the floor, but beneath it was a little hollow in the floorboards, a place he kept a roll of cash for emergencies and a little baggie full of deep blue capsules. He pulled a couple out and took them to Brienne.

“You’re sure?” he asked her.

“Why not?” she answered.

“True. Well, finish your steak. Better to take it on a full stomach.”

She nodded, and turned back to her plate. Jaime did too, chewing thoughtfully on his meat while he contemplated her. The last thing he had expected when he had picked her up from that dusty desert road was that he would be here on the beach with her, preparing to take a trip to the other side.

“Where do you want to do it?” he asked after he had taken her plate and dumped it into his sink that was pretty much just a bucket.

“I don’t know. Does it make a difference?”

“It helps to be relaxed. Calm. It can be extreme. Not always in a good way.”

“Where do you do it?”

“Usually on the beach. In the dark. On a nice quiet night like this.”

“That sounds good.”

Jaime smiled and held out his hand. She took it, clambering to her feet and letting him lead her down to the beach. Podrick was sparko, spread across the other beanbags.

“Here?” Jaime asked, and she nodded.

He sat beside her in the cool sand. Opened another beer for each of them, holding the bottles between his knees to get the tops off and then passing hers over, along with one of the pills.

Brienne put her pill on her tongue. Pushed it back with her teeth. Took a swig of her beer and necked it.

“Down the hatch,” Jaime marvelled. Watching her throat move under her skin. He swallowed his own with a long pull of beer.

“How long does it take?” Brienne asked. She wriggled in the sand. Lay back with her hands on her belly.

“Not long,” Jaime whispered.

Already his breath felt a little hot. He felt a little dizzy.

Brienne seemed to be panting, too. She looked at him with frightened eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he tried to say. He tried to reach for her hand, too, but … she was so far away—the other side of the beach, the other side of the world.

The world was on fire. Jaime walked through it, naked as his nameday.

The fire gave no heat, and it did not burn him. He could touch it as easily as he could touch his own skin. It felt like flowing silk, like lapping waves. It burned fierce and green all around him.

As he always did on the other side, Jaime had both hands. He had a violin, too – always a violin. He could hear its music even before he began to play. Feel it vibrating in his bones.

He tucked it beneath his chin and raised his bow. His bow burned as well—bright blue fire. Jaime played. A slow, haunting piece that had once been his signature. The Rains of Castamere. He had always finished a concert with The Rains of Castamere.

The dead came towards him then, but they weren’t really the zombies he had laughed about with Brienne – nothing so exciting. They were wasted ghosts, as thin as the air, as unreachable as the music. His father, eyes cold and disapproving. His mother, shaking her head slowly, a single tear falling down her cheek.

He called to her – she didn’t answer. She reached for him, all long fingernails and sharp teeth. Jaime couldn’t play. His hand hurt, his hand wasn’t there.

A warm hand touched his shoulder. Jaime shuddered.

It was Brienne. He gasped. Brienne? No one else but he and his ghosts had ever been in his other side before.

Nonetheless, she was there, and she was real. Naked as he was, her skin pressed against his skin. She was holding him. Wrapping him in her arms, pressing his head to her breast, so close he could hear her heartbeat. She was soft, and he felt safe.

“Are these your ghosts?” she whispered. Her voice was steady and strong, reverberating through her chest.

Jaime nodded against her breast. Squeezed his eyes closed.

“They can’t hurt you,” Brienne said. “I’m your protector.”

She had something in her hand – a baton? A nightstick? It glowed with the same blue fire Jaime’s bow did.

She pushed him behind her and stepped forward. The darkness swallowed them both.

Jaime woke up on the beach, Brienne beside him.

She was awake too, blinking slowly. “Is it over?” she asked in a thick voice.

He nodded. “You look awake to me.”

“That was … intense.”

He grinned. “It always is. What – what did you see?”

She shook her head. Her hands moved vaguely in front of her, as if she were trying to put the ephemeral into words. “A man in a cloak. Ronnet, I think. A rose. I bit my tongue off, right off … but it didn’t hurt. And _you_ … driving away from me in your car while I cried.”

“You dreamed of me?”

Brienne nodded.

“I dreamed of you, too.”

She laughed, and her face softened, some of the other side dropping away from her. “Was I fighting your zombies?”

“Yeah.” He thought it best not to mention the cuddling naked part.

Jaime sat up, shook the sand out of his locs. Took a slug of beer, which was unpleasantly warm now.

“So what do you think?” he asked. “Glad you tried it?”

“I think so,” she answered. She looked like she was still trying to make her body work. “It was certainly an experience.”

“You’ll probably have some wild dreams tonight,” he warned. “But it’s out of your system pretty quickly.”

She nodded. “I feel … out of my body. Weird, but … relaxed.”

“Mmm, it’s always like that. As strange as the other side gets, you feel good afterwards. Buzzed.”

“That’s good.”

They stared out at the horizon for a while. The waves kissing the sand.

“You want some more to drink?” he said after a while.

“Sure.”

Jaime traipsed back to the house, fetched another couple of beers from the fridge, but then remembered he had most of a bottle of tequila from when his brother visited. He put the beers back grabbed that instead, along with a couple of shot glasses.

Brienne’s eyes lit up when she saw the bottle. Grinned up at him from the sand. “The hard stuff. Looks like I graduated.”

He put the shot glasses in the sand and awkwardly poured them a shot each. She picked hers up in shaking fingers. Clinked her glass against his. “To the other side,” she grinned.

“The other side,” Jaime agreed. He necked his shot and gasped. “Another?”

“Another!”

They went again. And again. And again … Jaime lost count. They drank until they were talking bullshit, laughing and singing and dancing and pontificating about the state of the world, about the state of their lives, then about the state of their romantic relationships.

“That _fucker_ …” Brienne slurred, slopping her tequila over her forearm as she gesticulated. “He gave me roses when he broke up with me. Took me to dinner, gave me a box of long-stem, bright red _roses_ and _then_ told me there was no way he could ever marry me.”

“That’s _cold_ ,” Jaime said.

“A week before our wedding. A _week_! I had my dress all ready, my flowers ordered. The Sept was booked … dinner for sixty people. I had to call them _all_. Lost all my deposits. And he just disappeared. Out of my life.”

“He _is_ a fucker,” Jaime agreed.

“I bet you’ve never been dumped. You’re too good looking.”

Jaime scoffed. “I’m _divorced_.”

“No!”

He nodded, which made the beach spin.

“Who would divorce _you_? Who would turn down the chance to wake up to that jawline every morning?” She giggled, red in the face, and downed her shot.

“Lysa Tully. The opera singer. Fucking diva. Not that I wanted to marry her, I think my father wanted it more than me. We never had a great marriage, I was only interested in my music anyway.” Jaime shook his head “But it all came to a very shitty end. Look it up! It’s _allll_ in the papers. I got publicly dumped for a tiny, weasel-faced conductor.”

“Good with his hands,” Brienne said. Then she realised what she’d said. Grabbed his stump and squeezed. “Oh, I’m _sorry_ …”

Jaime laughed until he wheezed. Coughed and drank his shot. “She was _not_ nice about my hand.”

“What? Why?”

“Because she’s a _fucker_ , too.”

Brienne poured them another shot each. Clinked her glass against his. “Fuck the fuckers!” she called.

“Fuck the fuckers,” Jaime agreed. But instead of downing the shot, he kissed her.

Brienne squeaked in surprise. Pulled away, her eyes wide.

“Oh, shit,” Jaime said. “I’m – I’m sorry. I thought –”

“No … do it again,” Brienne said.

“Oh?”

“Kiss – kiss me again. You took me by surprise.”

“All right … if you’re sure?”

She bit her lip. “I’m sure.”

She put her glass down, and they came together hungrily, a clumsy, drunk kiss that was all teeth and tongue and alcohol breath. Jaime had his hand on her face, and she tried to run her fingers through his locs and ended up pulling his hair instead.

“You’re strong,” he said with a stupid grin on his face.

“Do you like that?” she asked.

“I do,” he admitted and pulled her to him again.

They kissed and moved apart and kissed again – Jaime’s blood thumped in his ears and sang in his veins like sweet music. Did she want to have sex? Her hand moved from his chest to his belly to his hardening dick. Oh, gods, she _did_! Amazing. Miraculous, but terrifying, too. Gods, it had been so long, _so long_ , and never with one hand … but did it matter? He still had a hand, surely he could use it well enough to give an orgasm to this wonderful Brienne O’Tarth.

He kissed her face, he kissed her neck, he fumbled the buttons on her sundress open, yanked her bra down and kissed her tits as well. Sucked her nipples so hard that she hissed through her teeth. Kissed her belly, kissed her thighs. Kissed her sex through her practical cotton knickers. Worked his way back up her body, kissing, kissing, kissing. Tasting her skin with flicks of his tongue, the sweat and the sand and the salt.

Then he was back at her lips, on top of her now, kissing her deeply, his tongue tangled with hers. Thrusting against her, dry humping, thrusting harder, faster, faster …

… until, breathless, he pulled back. Sat on his legs while she lay on the sand before him. “I need to stop,” he whispered. “Or I’ll come in my pants.”

She took a slow, deep breath, her eyes watching him lustily. “I want to fuck you, Jaime.”

“As if you could resist!” Oh Gods, why did he have to make a joke out of _everything_? He fell on top of her again, his open mouth landing on her open mouth, tongue against hers before either of them had the chance to draw breath.

Jaime could not have said how long they lay there, kissing and writhing against each other. It might have been minutes or it might have been hours; it was like time slept when his cock woke. He got her dress undone, her knickers off, got his flares open and partway down his thighs. She cried out once, as he pushed two fingers inside her and he thought maybe she had come? But she grabbed his hand and arched against him even harder, grinding herself on the heel of his hand without losing a beat.

He shifted to get his cock inside her, but she rolled away, and then she rolled _him_ , onto his back, sat atop him and lowered herself onto his cock inch by inch.

It felt like a dance. She pinned him under her weight, cursed as he pinched her nipple, then followed his touch with his lips, half-choked with pleasure. Skin slapped, skin slipped, skin sweated and slid over skin and Brienne grunted like a pig at every crash of their hips, but still, he could not seem to bring her to orgasm. It was as if all his sexual prowess had been in his right hand.

“I’m a little out of practice,” he said when he paused for a second to catch his breath.

“How long has it been?”

“Six years. Almost a virgin reborn.” He laughed a ragged, breathless laugh. “I can do it. I swear I can make you come.”

Grunting, she ground her hips atop his again, her head tipped back on her long neck, and suddenly it was Jaime struggling to keep his orgasm at bay. Her short, shallow thrusts had him moaning, his thighs trembling, his toes curling.

He put his fingers on her sex, but she grabbed them immediately, moved them higher.

“My clit is _there_ ,” she told him.

“Fuck,” he moaned. “Sorry.”

His skills had gone to shit since his divorce. But if he was honest, they hadn’t been all that great _then_. Fucking Lysa had always been a chore, and he suspected most of her loud, operatic climaxes had been faked to get it over with. They’d had a crap marriage.

So this was too much now, _Brienne_ was too much. His eyes closed, his hips lifting frantically to meet hers and his wrist ached from rubbing her clit. His cock felt thicker and harder with every thrust and lightning bolts of pleasure lanced down both his legs.

_I’m going to come before she does._

The realisation shamed him. Lysa had been the only woman he’d ever slept with, and he’d honestly never expected to sleep with a woman again. He hadn’t so much as watched any porn since they’d split. It had never mattered – he’d always thought he had decent stamina, decent control.

He was pretty drunk and still feeling the aftereffects of the Shade of the Evening, but even so … by rights, he should have made Brienne come by now.

Instead, he felt himself falling, utterly overwhelmed by the reality of her on top of him. He took his fingers off her clit and clutched her upper thigh. Jaime had an instant to savour the sight of his fingers digging into all that delicious freckled flesh, and then he slammed into his orgasm with a hoarse cry. The pleasure was blinding. Brienne slowed her thrusting and collapsed atop him.

He let go of her thigh, gasping and shuddering and mortified. He grabbed her clumsily under her arse, hand and stump, and pulled her, urging her higher.

“I can do it with my mouth,” he panted. Wriggling down even as she knee-walked up.

“Like this? Are – are you sure?” But she was on him, shoving his head down with the weight of her, sitting her cunt down right on his open mouth. Jaime groaned, smothered, getting smeared with his own come – and she was absolutely soaked with need. Her clit was rigid and engorged – how in all the hells could he have missed it before?

“Oh gods!” She was close at least; she thrust against his face, shuddering. Letting him snatch a breath before pushing him under again into that sweet, drowning world of her cunt. Jaime drank his come from her, his tongue inside her and then sucking on her clit. “Oh gods, I’m going to come!”

She surged against him, her pubic bone colliding with his nose so hard he thought she’d broken it. She gave a great noisy wail that probably woke up the whole beach and possibly the resort beyond. Then her legs gave way and he had to catch her. Help her roll off his face. She knelt on all fours, panting and flushed, still trembling a little. Jaime resisted the impulse to punch the air. He’d done it!

Brienne lurched to her feet. She was all come and sand below the waist, her dress hanging off one shoulder, the cups of her bra pushed down, her knickers around one ankle. She was shining with sweat. She looked like she’d been brawling instead of fucking.

Glorious.

“Wow, that was …” He couldn’t find the words.

She seemed pretty stunned, too.

Jaime crawled to his knees. Found his flares. Found one of his sandals a little way down the beach. Found five or six beads that had come out of his locs. She stepped back into her knickers and buttoned her dress.

“Come on,” he managed to pant, and caught her hand in his. Pulling her with him, to the ocean.

He stripped his clothes off completely as they got to the surf, threw them away with abandon and charged naked into the waves.

“Come on!” he yelled back at the shore when he was a little over waist-deep. “The water’s lovely!”

She had both arms folded over her tits. “Skinny dipping?”

“I don’t have a bath!” he yelled. Splashed his face and scrubbed his beard. “And we made a _mess_.”

“I don’t know … Is it legal?”

He looked at her as if she was totally mad. “You just sat on my face on a public beach! You weren’t too concerned about legal _then_.”

She laughed. He had a good point, and she knew it. “Fuck it,” she said. Threw her dress to the sand, followed by her underwear. She waded out to join him, and he put his arms around her. Gave her a long, salty, sweaty kiss as the waves lapped at their bodies.

He was getting hard again – at least that was one area where being like a teenager in bed was impressive.

“I’ve only got one bed, too,” he whispered as she kissed his shoulder. “I could take the couch, but …”

“We could share,” she said. “Although we’ll probably be joined by Podrick at some point.”

He laughed. “More the merrier, right?”

They washed themselves down, picked up their clothes and walked up the beach with their arms around each other. 

It felt strange, it felt exciting. It felt like something he wanted to continue.

He couldn’t wait until the morning.


	2. The Honeymoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this is a little later than I'd hoped, I've been ill this week and it put me a few days behind.

It was hot. It was sticky. Podrick was licking her face.

Brienne woke with a groan, rolled over.

Oh.

She opened her eyes to _that_ jawline. Those golden-blond locs draped over his pillow. She had woken to Jaime Lannister.

She sat up on Jaime’s Lannister’s mattress, her head hurting like all the hells, her thighs aching. They had fucked on the beach. Again in the bed. She and _Jaime Lannister_.

Podrick nudged her shoulder and whined. Ran to the door and back again, his tail wagging. He, of course, cared nothing for sitting and staring, staring at the golden god she had woken up next to, the vision of perfect, sculpted, masculine beauty bathed in morning sunlight.

Nope, Podrick was hungry. Brienne got up, stretched her aching muscles and padded through into the other room of what she could only describe as Jaime’s shack. He didn’t seem to have any curtains, and the sunshine through the windows was blindingly bright – she winced and groaned. Thankfully the beach was still deserted, or she would have given some early risers quite the eyeful, too.

She filled Podrick’s bowl, then opened her rucksack to find something to wear. Underwear. Something. There was too much daylight to be quite this naked.

She was stepping into her knickers at a most ungainly angle when Jaime came through. He, of course, looked like a sleepy god, stretching his back and scratching his locs with a sly grin on his face. He seemed totally unconcerned with his nudity.

Brienne pulled her knickers on.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Morning.” Brienne did up her bralette. Twisted it round and put her arms through the straps. Carried on hunting through her suitcase for clothes.

“Do you … want some orange juice?” Jaime asked after an awkward moment.

“Please.”

He went to his tiny little beer fridge, got out the carton and poured some into a cracked mug. Handed it to her, all in silence. He looked at her expectantly, so she drank it.

“It’s very nice.” She handed the empty mug back to him.

“Good.”

Last night’s plates and glasses and everything were all piled in the bucket he clearly used for a sink. He added the mug to the top of it.

He fidgeted a moment while she dug out a pair of khaki shorts from her rucksack and stepped into them.

“Uh … Brienne?”

“Yes?”

“We were pretty drunk last night, right?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“We do stupid things when we’re drunk, right? Everyone. Us.”

Oh, here it came. The sober realisation. The gentle letdown. Brienne wasn’t exactly a stranger to this. “It’s fine.”

“Well, I don’t know that it is.”

“Look, I’m here on holiday, I’m letting my hair down. We had some fun. I realise it doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything.”

It was always like this. _Always_. Because she was ugly, men always assumed she was desperate, that they had given her a priceless gift by sticking their cocks in her. That she was going to cling to their ankles sobbing if they didn’t produce a diamond afterwards.

But Jaime … he looked a little bit crushed? He opened his mouth only to close it again. Swallowed hard. “Oh. Well uh ... actually ... I didn’t mean that.”

“Oh?”

“I uh ... I meant that we uh ... we made ... that is we slept together … _twice_ last night without a condom.”

“Oh. Yes. Um... So we did.” Brienne felt herself blush to her boots.

“I know neither of us are ... well ... promiscuous. It’s not that I’m worried about you know ... _disease_.”

“Oh. You’re worried about ...”

“Yeah.”

Brienne swallowed. She had bad news. “Uh ... well. Moon pills make me quite ill. After Ronnet dumped me, I stopped taking them.”

“Oh.”

Silence hung between them for a long moment.

“Well, that was colossally stupid of us, then, wasn’t it?” Jaime said with a grin.

“Yeah. I-I didn’t think.”

“Neither of us did. We were drunk.”

“We were.”

“And still quite high.”

“Definitely. But, look … I only just stopped taking it. I haven’t even had a period yet, so …”

“Oh, so chances are …”

“Yeah, exactly. We’d be unlucky.”

He smiled. “I hope it’s not rude to bring it up.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you know … obviously, take my number,” Jaime said. “Even if we don’t see each other again in Qarth … you know, while you’re here in Qarth, then …”

“Oh. Good idea. Thanks.”

“Of course, that doesn’t mean …”

“What?”

“You know. If I – I mean if _you_ wanted to get together again … while you’re here, then … well, that would be fine with me.”

“O-okay.”

“But that’s no pressure, yeah? If … if you wanted to go out there and fuck a different guy every night, I … well, that’s fine too. Good for you … after what happened.”

Brienne smiled. Shook her head. “No, I don’t want that.”

“You probably have lots of activities planned. Things to see … places to … I don’t know, go shopping?”

“Well, I should probably go and check into my hotel.”

“Yeah. Of course. We’ll go get my car and –”

“Want to come? Laugh at what a touristy shithole it is?”

Jaime's face broke into a huge grin. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Great.” She rummaged some more in her bag, trying to find a t-shirt she knew she had packed. Realised Jaime was still looking at her. He still looked nervous. “What?”

“Can I … I mean, would it be all right if – if I kissed you good morning?”

“You mean now?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “It’s not every day I wake up to see a woman in a bra in my house.”

Brienne laughed. “How could I say no?”

Jaime crossed the room, grinning, his arms outstretched. Brienne fell into them, and he tilted his head up to her, his eyes half-lidded and his expression passionate. They kissed, long and sweet and sloppy, and when they broke apart, they were both a little breathless.

Wow. Brienne had never before believed it when her girlfriends had talked about being weak in the knees after kisses.

It seemed once they started, they couldn’t stop. They kissed while they made coffee, kissed while they drank it on the verandah, kissed while they gathered Brienne’s things together and as they walked along the beach on their way back to Jaime’s car. Arms around each other, laughing and talking together, gazing at each other like a couple who were madly in love. Like a couple who had known each other for longer than twenty-four hours, at least.

Jaime’s car was where they had left it and other than the fact it had a freshly spray-painted Sons of the Harpy emblem on the side, it was thankfully undamaged. Just as he’d promised, it started first time, too.

Podrick jumped up on the back seat again, panting from all the bouncing he’d done along the beach. Jaime and Brienne hopped in the front, leaning over the gap in the seats to indulge in another lengthy kissing session. Like a couple of foolish teenagers.

Brienne felt herself smiling, unable to stop herself, as they drove off and headed into the sunny streets. In the bright, unrelenting daylight, Qarth looked so much less oppressive. More alive. More vibrant and exciting. Or perhaps it was the fact she had her hand on Jaime’s thigh as he drove. The fact that he oh-so-accidentally nudged that hand higher every time he leaned over himself to change gear.

By the time they passed out of the run-down suburbs and got into the glitzy, towering hotels and malls of the tourist part of town, even the loose, paisley harem pants Jaime wore couldn’t disguise how hard he was.

“You know earlier?” he blurted suddenly as they headed down the main shopping street. “When you said about seeing your hotel?”

“Yeah?”

“You meant _in_ the room, right?”

“I did.”

He let out a massive sigh of relief, stuck on his indicator and yanked on the wheel to pull his car onto the nearest pavement.

He leapt out. Slammed the car door behind him.

“Jaime!” Brienne called. “What are you –”

“Condoms!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Lots!”

Brienne’s face burned as at least a dozen morning shoppers turned her way.

He came back a few minutes later with a big grin and a plastic bag bunched in his hand. He passed it to her as he got into the car. “Should keep us going,” he said as he drove off again.

The box sat on Brienne’s thighs, almost burning with promise. Jaime wasn’t the only one with an arousal problem.

The Hotel Gehane was right on the seafront and had guaranteed every room had either a sea view or a pool view. It had been quite eye-wateringly expensive, but finding somewhere to stay that allowed dogs, let alone huge, eleven-stone dogs like Podrick, had seriously limited her choices.

“It occurs to me,” she said as Jaime found a spot in the car park, “that I didn’t actually take Ronnet off the booking.”

“Oh,” said Jaime. “So I could be him? I could … stay?”

Brienne nodded. “If you wanted. You don’t have to, if it’s too –”

“Why not?” he grinned. “It’s been years since I’ve been on holiday.”

She grinned at him as she tried to rouse a very sleepy Podrick from the back seat, tried to clip a lead onto his collar and then drag him bodily out of the car. Jaime grabbed her suitcase and her rucksack and laughed as she fell on her arse trying to get a reluctant Podrick out of the gap between the front seat and the door.

Finally, a very grumpy, very sleepy Leonberger was following her, and they went through the plush front doors into the hotel reception.

Inside, the hotel had done its very best to recreate the feel of the Old City of Qarth, with polished sandstone flooring, intricate archways and even a triple-walled fountain that of course, Podrick wanted to drink from as soon as he saw it.

Brienne went to the reception desk. Jaime hung back.

“I’m – _we’re_ here to check-in,” she told the pretty girl on the other side of the desk.

“Of course, can I take your name?”

That caught Brienne a little off-guard – she hadn’t, of course, changed the name on the booking either. “C-Connington,” she stammered. Hoping Jaime hadn’t heard. Not that she was ashamed, but … it felt weird. By now, that should have been her name. “I’m sorry I’m – _we’re_ – late. We had car trouble yesterday.”

“That’s quite all right,” the receptionist smiled. “You’re in the Tourmaline Suite. Seventh floor.” She folded a key card into a leather wallet and beckoned to a porter to help with their luggage.

They rode up in a gleaming elevator playing very soft, very soothing music. Podrick whined a little at the odd sensation, but Brienne scratched his ears comfortingly, and he leaned his big head against her, reassured.

It wasn’t until the doors opened and the porter stepped out with their luggage that she noticed Jaime had also handed the man the plastic bag full of condoms as well as the suitcase and rucksack. Under all the clean, sparkling spotlights, the bag was quite transparent, too. It displayed _all_ the sensual, neon text and the suggestive silhouette to anyone who walked by.

Brienne almost died a thousand deaths.

But then … she and Jaime were supposedly there on their honeymoon, right? It was nothing to be embarrassed about – sex was expected.

“It’s just here,” the porter said with a smile. He unlocked the door and flung it open with a flourish.

Oh.

Well. The first thought that came into Brienne’s mind was that sex certainly _was_ expected.

If not in the enormous, heart-shaped bed covered with rose petals, then in the sunken hot-tub she could see out on the balcony. Maybe on the thick, fake-fur rug in front of the simulated fireplace, too. Or on the deep, soft, generous sofas that even _she_ would be able to stretch out on. Even the table seemed like the _perfect_ height to get bent over and taken roughly from behind – someone had clearly done some careful measuring and calculating.

Brienne, redder than red, tipped the porter far too generously and studiously avoided Jaime’s eyes.

It was a good job that she did – no sooner had she closed the door than he rounded on her with a massive, shit-eating grin on his face.

“ _This_ was your honeymoon? _This_?!”

“I – I didn’t realise it would be quite so –”

“I _really_ didn’t picture you as the rose-petals-on-the-bed type! Nor … oh, gods, is that pink champagne over there on the table? And heart-shaped chocolates?”

“Shut up!” she laughed, steering Podrick to the doggy bed. He flopped down at once, clearly eager to resume his nap from the back seat of Jaime’s car.

“What in all the hells was your wedding going to be like? Were you going to release doves? Dress your dog up as your ring-bearer? Please tell me you didn’t write your own vows?”

“Stop it!”

Laughing, he pulled her towards him and got up on his sandaled tiptoes to kiss her. “Well, you’ve trapped me here in your tacky pleasure palace now, Brienne O’Tarth. What are you going to do with me?”

She sucked and tongued his lower lip very thoroughly. “Probably I’ll kiss you a little more.”

“Oh, yes.”

Her hands moved from his waist to up inside his white t-shirt, pulling it up over his head as she went. “I’ll probably take your clothes off too.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

She let a finger trail down his chest, over his long beaded necklaces and down through the golden fuzz between his nipples. Over his washboard abs and down to the tent he was pitching in his harem pants.

“Maybe I’ll play with this a little.”

Jaime gasped as she palmed the rigid length of his cock through the pants, stroked him up and down. “Oh – oh that’s good.”

Brienne kept stroking, using the silky fabric to stimulate him, sliding it between her fingers and his cock as she worked it. Up and down. Up and down. It seemed as though Jaime did not wear underpants.

He actually seemed dumbstruck – his mouth kept opening, moving in vague, word-shaped movements but the sounds were consumed by gasps and small, breathy moans. His hand clutched her hip. Fingers digging into her arse cheek.

“Stop – stop!” he managed to cry, pulling her hand off his cock. “Stop, or I’ll shoot my load.”

“Do you want to try the bed?” Brienne whispered.

“You mean your heart-shaped, rose petal bed that looks like it was made _exclusively_ for lovemaking?” Jaime said with a raised eyebrow and a cheeky grin.

“Oh, shush.”

He grabbed the box of condoms from the bag, clutched it under his stumped arm and tore it open with his teeth. “I’ll level with you,” he said, spitting a strip of cardboard across the room. “I’m probably going to nut in about five seconds – you’ve been driving me crazy all morning. But I’m – I’ll make you come, I promise.”

He was so earnest about it – just as he had been last night. It seemed very important to him. “Thanks,” she said. Unsure of what was the appropriate response.

Jaime didn’t seem to mind what she said – he was busy kicking his harem pants across the room and then concentrating intently on what must be the very difficult task of putting a condom on with only one hand.

So Brienne undressed herself, folding her clothes on top of her case. She looked up to find him looking at her. Head to toe and back again. Almost drooling.

“You … are _so_ sexy,” he breathed.

Brienne laughed.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I –”

“Seriously? Do you not see how hard my cock is right now?” His grin grew wide as he waggled it suggestively at her.

“Just come here,” she admonished with a roll of her eyes.

“Ahhh, I get it,” Jaime said. “You’ve been with _those_ men. The types who wanked off looking at underwear models and movie stars and page 3 girls.”

He took her in his arms. Nibbled a scorching trail across her collarbone and into the hollow of her neck. She was sensitive there, and it made her shiver. “Who do you wank off to then? Men?”

She’d meant it to be funny. Self-deprecating about her somewhat masculine size and appearance. But it landed wrong, and it sounded maybe kind of … homophobic? Gods she wanted the Red Waste to swamp the city and swallow her up.

Jaime pulled back and looked up at her, his eyebrows raised. “First time I had an orgasm,” he said. “It was the 280 Mid-Year International Sports Tourney, the middle of the four-year summer. Remember that? I was fourteen. Watching it on TV in the common room of the Marillion dorms between lessons and … Maege Mormont. _Maege Mormont._ Doing the clean and jerk. Talk about a sexual awakening for an innocent young boy only ever interested in music.”

“So … it’s like a fetish?”

“No! No. I’m attracted to muscular women, okay? It’s not something weird or perverted.”

“I didn’t mean that –”

“I know what you meant,” he said evenly. “You can’t fathom that a man would find you attractive, because you don’t look the way society tells you that men _should_ find attractive. It’s a lack of confidence.”

Brienne opened her mouth. Closed it again.

“That’s bullshit, by the way. I find you stunningly attractive, okay? You’re hotter than Maege Mormont. You have an absolutely knockout body that you clearly work very hard on, and you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”

Brienne stammered. Blushed _hard._ “I work out for my job, mostly.”

He reached up to cup her face. Pushed his fingers into her hair and stroked her thumb with his cheek.

Then they were kissing, hard and wet and so, so delicious. Hands everywhere.

He pushed her back towards the bed, hungry and impatient – Brienne had never seen such abject lust in a man’s eyes, certainly never directed at her. She had a wild desire to hunt down Maege Mormont and thank her profusely.

They fell onto the bed together, Jaime on top. As soon as her back touched the mattress, the whole thing lurched wildly, wobbling beneath her in waves.

Jaime burst out laughing even as he kissed her. “Of course it’s a water bed!”

It felt good though – every movement they made set the bed in motion again, sliding their bodies over each other’s, nudging them together, almost doing the thrusting for them. Water beds were a hideous, tacky cliché, but … there was method in the madness.

“Oh gods you’re so strong,” Jaime groaned when he slid inside her. “Those _thighs_. Squeeze me with them?”

Brienne grinned and tilted her hips, bringing her thighs tight around the sides of his arse, squeezing him and squeezing him _hard_.

“Like that?”

He stuttered and trembled, clinging to the silk sheet by her head. The sound he made was nothing short of _feral_.

“Fuck! _Fuck_ .. you could burst a watermelon with those. Break a man’s skull …”

The thought of _that_ seemed to drive Jaime into a near-frenzy – the bed undulated wildly beneath them.

“Harder,” he begged through gritted teeth. “Harder - fuck.”

Gods, it felt good for her too – holding him so tight with her legs meant his pubic bone pressed right on her clit, and his cock gave short, sharp thrusts that ground right, right _there_ , right where she –

“Fuck I’m going to come,” Jaime groaned, and then the water bed was moving in rapid pulses and he was shuddering and moaning in her arms.

“Sorry,” he panted. “You were close, weren't you?”

Well, not really _close_ , but –

He rolled off her and sat up to throw away the condom. Brienne lay flat on the wobbling bed, sweating and panting.

“Sorry,” he said again. He turned back to her, ran his hand over her sweat-slicked belly.

She stroked his arm. “It’s fine.”

“No, I can do it!” he said. He fell to his knees and thrust his face between her legs.

Brienne squeaked. Sat up on her elbows.

He kissed her there, softly at first, looking up at her with bright green eyes. Eager to please, desperate to prove himself. Licked her softly, watching her reactions carefully. He dipped a little lower to put his tongue inside her, thrust it slowly in and out of her.

“Mmmm …” she said. It felt nice.

“I used to be good at this,” he said after less than a minute. He looked concerned that she hadn't come yet. A little frustrated. “I promise.”

Brienne sighed. “You _are_ good at this.”

“I’m out of practice,” he said.

“Look. Every woman’s different,” Brienne said. “If you’re just doing what your wife liked ...”

“Well … yeah.” He laughed. “But most of the time, she didn’t like _me_ , so that was another problem.”

Jaime rolled away and lay on his back beside her, looking up at the ceiling. Brienne had a rather uncharitable thought – she suspected Lysa Tully had faked her orgasms to get sex over with. It didn’t sound as though they had been particularly happy.

“It takes me a while,” she said, reaching over to stroke Jaime’s locs. “More than just a few minutes. It’s not that you’re doing it wrong.”

“You’re here a week, and you’ve just had a bad breakup. I want it to be memorable for you.”

Brienne laughed. “It certainly is that.”

“No, I mean it. You come all this way, you get picked up by a hot stranger …” he grinned. “You should be having very hot sex.”

“And you don’t think making a man come just by squeezing him between my thighs is hot sex?”

Jaime groaned at the mere thought. “ _Fuck_ that was sexy.”

“Come here,” she said, but she went to him. Leaned over him to kiss him, soft and sweet and slow.

She took hold of his hand and guided it to her breast.

“I have very sensitive nipples,” she whispered. Not believing herself, not believing she was daring enough to talk outright about it. She’d never done that before.

Jaime’s eyes lit up, and he ran a thumb around the edge of her nipple. Across it. Smiling when she shivered. “Do you like having them sucked?”

She nodded. “Very much.”

He dipped his head to take her left nipple in his mouth while he stroked the right. His mouth … the hot wet sweetness of his tongue, that perfect sensation of suction and the slight scrape of beard on her breast.

Brienne moaned. Jaime hummed. Sucked harder.

Oh, gods that felt good – it was like there was a nerve that ran all the way from her nipples to her clit. His mouth made her sigh and moan and curse. Lightning behind her closed eyes and her hands clenched on the sheets.

He wrapped his stumped arm around her arse, and she humped against his hip while he sucked. While he pulled and pinched her right nipple.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, “Please don’t stop.”

He groaned into her breast, and even the vibration of that felt like something electric and wonderful.

It felt good and good and _good_ and …

A cry tore from her throat as she tumbled into orgasm, her body tensing and then releasing, tensing and releasing.

She opened her eyes to see Jaime, a huge grin on his face. Looking like he’d just broken into the gold reserves at the Iron Bank.

“Good?” he asked.

“Very.”

For a moment, she thought he might cheer, but he pulled her down to kiss her and then extricated himself from her embrace. He got up and stretched, sweat-slicked and gloriously naked.

“Sorry,” he said with a grimace. “I’d cuddle, but that bed makes me feel seasick after a while.”

Brienne sighed. “Maybe we should ask to change rooms.”

“No! It’s probably fine for sleeping. Just … with all the …” He mimed some obscene thrusting.

Brienne laughed. “It _is_ a bit tacky, though. A little … _much_.”

It _was_. Getting to know someone new, having sex with him for the first time, surrounded by the trappings of a lifelong commitment she’d almost made was quite surreal.

“Does it make you think of him?” Jaime asked softly. “The man who should have been your husband?”

Brienne shrugged. “Not really.”

He picked up her hand.

“What was your honeymoon like?” she asked him.

“Short,” Jaime said. “Two days, before we both had to fly off for work again. We had a cabin in the Mountains of the Moon, and we both spent most of it rehearsing.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“We were both dedicated professionals at the top of our game. I thought … I thought we would understand each other.”

She squeezed his hand, too. “Come on, let’s get a shower and go find something to eat. You know anywhere good?”

It turned out that he _did_ – not a restaurant, but a street food vendor that specialised in modernising authentic old-Qarth delicacies. Brienne was a little horrified by the idea of honey-roasted mice but as Jaime promised, they were amazing once you got over your Westerosi squeamishness.

They walked around the town, Jaime complaining about the noisy bars and the amount of generic fast food restaurants everywhere. But kissing her. Smiling all the time. Holding hands.

They took Podrick to the nearby dog park so he could have a frantic run around and tire himself out. Throwing his ball, watching him go mad in his efforts to get it, dashing the length of the park and back.

They sat on the stone statues in the shade of the big trees and kissed. Gazed into each other’s eyes like lovers. And then, when Podrick was tired, Jaime kissed Brienne’s neck and propositioned her in the most filthy, lascivious whisper she had ever heard.

They hurried back to the hotel, and this time, Jaime focused his attentions on Brienne’s nipples almost immediately. By the time she sat astride his cock on the wide sofa, she was burning, utterly insane with pleasure, consumed by Jaime’s touch and Jaime’s gaze and Jaime’s body. It felt like his cock was molten steel inside her. This time … this time she came before he did.

Jaime seemed crazily relieved, like he had finally done it “right”. Privately, Brienne’s suspicions about the nature of Lysa’s orgasms grew.

They had another walk in the evening, through the supposedly authentic market that was, according to Jaime, a massive tourist trap. The place was crowded and noisy, filled with stalls offering Qarthian souvenirs – wines and oils and bronze and brass ornaments, dried squid, carved onyx and all kinds of homoeopathic nonsense that claimed to be derived from Shade of the Evening. Brienne bought a couple of things for her father – postcards and a book on the history of the Qarthian war.

They said a brief goodbye with an indecent amount of snogging back in the hotel car park, and then Jaime went to pack himself a suitcase for the week. Well, he’d said suitcase, but when he returned, he carried all his clothes in a black bin bag, slung over his shoulder.

They had some very intense “missed you” sex in the shower and then, flushed and refreshed, went for dinner in the hotel restaurant. As the honeymooning couple, they were given complimentary champagne and were serenaded by a violinist who set Jaime’s teeth on edge with his technique. They held hands over the table, fed each other bites of food and generally behaved like the kind of people who really did want a waterbed and silk sheets on their honeymoon.

They ended up in the hotel bar, where they were given more free drinks by the hotel, and then treated to yet more by a couple there on their 25th wedding anniversary. A bottle of Dornish red and some more Tequila slammers later, and Jaime tried to pull Brienne to the dancefloor.

She was bad enough at dancing when she wasn’t drunk, and after she’d stepped on his foot for the fourth time, he gave up and did some very, very school-disco dancefloor moves and just leaned up to kiss her instead of dance.

Upstairs, she tried to give him a sloppy, drunken blow job, but he was too drunk to keep a decent erection, and she kept slipping and choking herself, so in the end, they gave up and just cuddled in bed, instead.

“What’s he like?” Jaime asked, jolting Brienne awake with a very unladylike snort.

“What? Wh-who?”

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were asleep.”

“Only a bit. What’s who like?”

“ _Ronnet Connington_. The man who should be holding you right now in this bed.”

Oh. So Jaime had been paying attention. “What do you want to know?”

He shrugged. “It’s just curiosity. What type of man could get you to spend the rest of your life with him?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer.”

“How did you meet?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“No I won’t! Well, maybe I will, but I won’t mean it unkindly.”

Brienne sighed. “Have you heard of _Knights of Old Westeros_?”

“No, what is that?”

“It’s a game. An MMORPG.”

“A what now?”

“An online role-playing game. Set in the times of knights and castles.”

“You play that sort of thing? Really?”

“Yes. I’m our guild’s main tank!”

“I have no idea what that means!”

Brienne scoffed. “I knew you’d laugh.”

“But I _don’t_ mean it unkindly.”

“Hmmm.”

“He played it too, did he?”

“Yes. We got to know each other like that. Online. We’d quest together and raid together, and we had a great time. Then we would talk outside the game and text and call and … well, we started a thing. A long-distance relationship. We went on like that for three years and then … he proposed on my nameday.”

“Oh?”

“I know, it’s probably stupid to have said yes to a man I hadn’t really met in person but … we talked all the time. Several hours a night. We’d had phone sex and video sex a lot – and he sent me one of those vibrators you can work from a phone app.”

“There are vibrators you can work from a phone app?”

“Yes. So we were engaged for a year and planned everything. He got a transfer with work up to Winterfell, and I got us a bigger place, and … I could tell when I met him at the airport that he was a bit … shocked by me.”

“By _you_?”

“Yeah. I mean … I’d told Ronnet I was tall, obviously. But hearing the numbers and seeing it are two different things, I guess. And height doesn’t really come across on a video call.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Things settled down, things moved forward – we lived together fine, and we made all the arrangements for the wedding, planned everything fine, bought everything fine. We’d lived together about six months by that point, and it was all … _fine_ , I thought. And he waited right up until a week before to tell me he’d changed his mind the minute he saw me at the airport.”

“Wow. What a shitbag.”

“Oh, but it’s not _me_. It’s _him_. He needed time to find himself, and maybe marriage wasn’t the best thing for him right then.”

“Ugh.”

Brienne let out a sigh. “I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t wait until the day itself. Leave me standing at the altar in my maiden cloak.”

“I _really_ want to punch him now.”

Brienne laughed, but she pulled him close, making the waterbed slosh around quite violently. She put her head on Jaime’s chest, her ear pressed against the soft golden fur between his nipples. His heartbeat against her ear, steady and slow and comfortable.

It was there she fell asleep.

The next day, Jaime took Brienne on the most touristy thing he could think of, a walking tour of the ruins of the House of the Undying. The place was crowded and full of annoying traders, once again selling the usual array of “medicinal” extracts of Shade of the Evening, and most of whom would probably give you the real thing if you flashed enough cash.

It was unbearably hot, so hot Brienne found herself too distracted to care much about the history their guide was imparting. Most of the ruins were little more than piles of grey rock baking in brilliant sunshine, so it was a little difficult to imagine the dark, foreboding place of warlocks and weirdness that the man talked of anyway.

Plus, Jaime had left his long, mandala-printed shirt open today, all his beads resting in his chest hair and his golden abs gleaming in the sun. All Brienne wanted to do was lick that sheen of sweat off him, ride his cock until he shattered her.

So the next day, they did nothing except each other. Hired one of the hotel dog-walkers to take Podrick out, and fucked in every conceivable position, in every corner of the room.

They talked openly about their sex lives, what they liked and what they didn’t, experimented with things they’d never done before and ordered lots and lots of room service. By the time Podrick was back, they were as exhausted as he was, and the three of them curled up on the waterbed and fell asleep.

Brienne woke early the next morning, squashed between Podrick and Jaime. She got up and had a drink, filled Pod’s bowl and went around the room picking up all the discarded condom wrappers they had used. There were _lots._

She found her bikini, put it on and decided the hot tub was the perfect place to soothe her aching muscles from the day before. She felt quite weak – it was like the day after leg day.

Jaime came out too – completely naked of course, despite the fact their balcony overlooked the hotel’s swimming pool. His locs were wrapped in a colourful scarf. He climbed in beside Brienne and lit a cigarette. Leaned over to kiss her good morning.

“Looks like it’s going to be another hot one,” he said with a nod at the clear blue sky.

Brienne nodded.

“Any plans?” he asked.

“Any suggestions?”

“We could do the walk around the old city walls? Some of the engravings are quite pornographic – might give us some inspiration?”

Brienne laughed. “Sounds good.”

Jaime grinned. Leaned back and took a long drag on his cigarette. “We could get some lunch in one of the plazas, too. Maybe get a massage or something in the spa downstairs? I know I could do with it, I think I twisted something in my back when you had your fingers in my –”

Brienne felt her skin get hot, a smile creeping up her cheeks. “You liked that, didn’t you?”

“Almost as much as the thigh-squeezing thing.”

“Good …”

“Brienne?” he said then, his voice suddenly a lot more serious.

“Yes?”

“I’ve … I’ve really enjoyed this.”

She smiled. “Me too.”

“I want you to know that. It’s been kind of … special.” He stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of the hot tub.

Brienne nodded. “Yes, it has.”

“Best honeymoon I’ve ever been on!”

She laughed.

He got serious. “I – I don’t want it to be over in three days.”

“Jaime –”

“Don’t go.”

“What?”

“Don’t go. Don’t get on your flight. Stay here with me?”

Brienne laughed. Jaime did not.

“Jaime, I _can’t_.”

“Why not?”

“I have a home. A job ...”

“Get a job here. Shopping centres need security guards in Qarth too.”

“My father …”

“What … is he … old?”

“Getting there. I don’t see him often enough as it is. If I was in a whole other country …”

“Wouldn’t he want you to be happy?”

“More than anything.”

“So be happy. Be happy with me. We only get one life, Brienne.”

Gods … he was something so impossible. So perfect, so beautiful, so sexy … and he wanted her. He really did. She looked down into the water, saw her own bikini-clad body, the body she’d hated for most of her life, the body that had always been her enemy until Jaime Lannister … and she felt so sad.

“I don’t want to end it …” she whispered.

“So … what? A long-distance relationship? Fucking over the internet with remote-controlled sex toys like you did with your last boyfriend? That worked out _really_ well, didn’t it.”

“Neither did jumping in with both feet with a man I didn’t know very well.”

“But he was an idiot!”

“Why don’t you come back to Westeros? We could … live near to each other, get to know each other properly, go on dates and meet each other’s families and …”

“What, in _Winterfell_?”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s cold and grey and the people are dour, miserable arseholes. What would I do there? How could I be who I am?”

“You could –”

“No. I couldn’t. I’d get recognised, and then photographed, and then it’s all ‘poor, sad recluse Jaime Lannister, look how far he’s fallen’. I’d lose everything I have here. All my freedom, all my peace.”

“Oh.”

They fell into silence, just the sound of the bubbling hot tub and the shrieking kids in the pool below between them.

“I’ll come back,” Brienne said after a moment. “I’ll save up, take some more holiday. I’ll try to get two weeks this time, and maybe if I stayed with you …”

“At my place?”

“It would be a start, wouldn’t it? We could … see what it was like. Living together, being together.”

“I’m going to fall in love with you, you know that, right?”

“Maybe.”

“ _Maybe_?” he grinned.

“I might be _very_ difficult to live with.”

“What, you leave piss on the toilet seat? You drink milk out of the fridge and put it back? Gods … you’re not a _tidy person_ , are you?”

She laughed. “None of those things!”

“Then what’s not to fall in love with? I’m halfway there already, you know. Maybe more.”

“Me too,” she whispered.

“Ooh!” he pantomimed with a raise of his eyebrows. “Brienne lurrrrrrrves me! She wants to have my baaaabies!”

She laughed and splashed him playfully. “Oh, you’re _definitely_ going to be difficult to live with!”

“I’d like to think I have my good sides.”

He shifted around the side of the hot tub to slither his stumped arm around her shoulders, pressing a soft kiss to her jaw. Another one on her neck, then a breathy, sloppy, wet one on her mouth that went on and on and on.

“I want to fuck you in this hot tub,” he whispered when they finally broke for air. Through the bubbling water, Brienne could see he was _hard_. “But … do condoms work underwater?”

“I don’t know.”

“Over the table, then.” He thumbed her wet nipples through her bikini, one at a time, making her shiver.

He pulled her to her feet and through the double doors into the suite. She thought he would get a towel, but he didn’t. He swept the assortment of cups, glasses, plates and the pink champagne bottle to the far end of the glass table and bent her over it, and almost forceful hand on her back.

Brienne pressed against the glass with a wet squelch. He ran his hand up her belly, between the table and her skin. Pushed her bikini top up to expose her breasts.

“Stay,” he said, as if she were a dog. Grinned at her.

Brienne stayed.

Jaime loped across the room to find the condom box – there weren’t many left. He turned his back to fumble one on with his single hand.

He came back to her. Nudged her ankles apart with his foot and pulled her wet bikini bottoms down around her thighs. He shoved himself inside her quite roughly. The burn was good, though. Exciting. He leaned over her back and panted in her ear.

“Imagine how you look from under the table.”

Brienne could only moan.

He started to thrust, and _gods_ , it felt good. Pressed face-down on the tabletop, her heated nipples chafing against the cool glass with every movement, his hand on her back, her arse, her clit …

She grabbed the edges of the table; her orgasm built in her belly, thrust after thrust after thrust. Jaime’s cock was so deep inside her that she could almost taste it.

“Don’t stop,” she begged him.

“Couldn’t if I wanted to,” he grunted. His chest and his belly rippled along her back. His thighs clenched behind her thighs.

And then that feeling was on her, a flower of pleasure blooming from her clit, bigger and bigger and bigger and _bigger_. So much it was too much, so much she couldn’t even cry out, could only grit her teeth and let out a long, desperate whine.

“Oh,” Jaime said. “Oh gods … oh gods … oh _yes_. Fuck!” She felt him press his sweaty forehead against her shoulder, felt the tickle of his locs on her skin. His chest heaved.

“I love you,” he moaned as he came.

“I love you, too,” Brienne answered. _I’m an idiot_ , she thought. _That can’t possibly be true._ But her head was full of endorphins, her body a jellified mess. What did it matter? She smiled like a total fool. Smiled again when she stood up to see the handprints and tit prints she’d left on the tabletop. Pitied the poor chambermaid would have to polish them out in a few days.

Jaime and Brienne were fools some more on their walk around the old city walls, stopping to kiss in every shady little nook, stupidly whispering their insanely premature feelings into each other’s mouths, into each other’s necks, against skin and with eyes.

It felt good, though. Sweet and beautiful and perfect. If Brienne hadn’t known it was so ridiculous, it would have been the strongest thing she had ever felt.

They ate a leisurely lunch in a plaza and made their way back to the hotel. They stopped on their way for more condoms and used another three that afternoon. Twice on the rug by the artificial fire and the third in the bed – a slow, gentle missionary full of deep kisses and long caresses and more utterly preposterous declarations.

The next two days were much the same – a couple of half-arsed tourist activities followed by hours of intense, wonderful, soul-searing lovemaking. It had got to the point where they knew each other’s bodies so well they could hold each other on the edge of bliss for ages, make each other beg and plead and moan for relief.

And then, because the love of two fools wasn’t nearly enough to stop the passage of time, their last night came and went, and the day of Brienne’s departure dawned. They had a subdued breakfast in the hotel restaurant, followed by an attempt at a last hurrah in bed, where they only succeeded in frustrating and disappointing themselves.

So they curled up on the horrible heart-shaped bed and held each other, instead. Not looking at Brienne’s packed suitcases, at Jaime’s packed bin bag.

“I’ll buy you a ticket,” Jaime blurted suddenly, even as he stroked her hair. “I know I shouldn’t say that, I shouldn’t try to be a sugar daddy or anything, but … fuck it. You don’t need to save up. Get whatever holiday you can from work, ask them straight away and … call me, yeah? I’ll get your tickets – I just want to be with you again.”

Brienne wondered if they would feel the same way in a week or two weeks from now. Didn’t holiday romances dissipate once all the sun and fun was behind you?

“I’ll call you,” she said softly. “I promise.”

“I’ll call you too. Every night.”

“Yes,” said Brienne, but she doubted he would. It was probably better if he didn’t.

“Hopefully my car won’t start,” Jaime said as he let Podrick into the back seat and Brienne loaded her suitcase into his boot. “It’s not the most reliable.”

But it did start. There was no overheating either; it ran perfectly through the city, through the suburbs and the outskirts, through the desert and all the way to the airport.

“Maybe your flight will be cancelled,” Jaime said as they unloaded her bags again. “There might be a storm coming.” There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, though. And on the board inside the airport, all was running on schedule.

Brienne checked her bags, got Podrick’s crate out of storage and took him to the animal check-in. He whined as soon as he saw the cage and refused to get in, which made Brienne instantly tearful. She put his favourite toys in there with him, and a shirt with her scent on for comfort. He climbed in reluctantly, the saddest look on his face that she had ever seen. She ruffled his ears through the bars and promised him she would see him soon.

She and Jaime walked slowly to the departure gate together, in silence.

“I suppose I should …” she said when they got there. She didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t go!” Jaime said suddenly. He grabbed her by the face, between his hand and his stump. Held her so she couldn’t not look at him. “You don’t belong in the shitty North, you don’t. You and Pod should be _here_ , free and happy in the sunshine. On the beach with me.”

“Jaime –”

“Stay here. Stay with me. Please.”

She pulled him close and kissed him, fierce and passionate. “I’ll come back,” she said. “I promise. As soon as I can.”

“I love you,” he said. “I’m not going to stop.”

“I love you too,” she whispered against his mouth. She knew it was stupid, but she meant it. She really did. “I’ll call you when I land. The second I get off the plane.”

“I’ll be counting the minutes,” he whispered back.

They kissed again, and then they were joined only by their arms, by their hands, by their fingertips, and then nothing. Brienne went to the gate and turned for a last look at Jaime Lannister, at his harem pants, his open shirt. His locs and his Crocs. His beautiful green eyes, his flashing smile. The love he had in his eyes.

She waved. He blew a kiss. Mouthed “love you” at her. She turned and left him, crying.

* * *

Jaime was up on the roof when he heard his phone ring. It was indoors, on his kitchen table; he’d left it there when he’d made himself a drink.

He was right in the middle of a delicate job, fixing the long beams he would need to make an extra room on his house, somewhere Podrick would be able to sleep when he and Brienne came to stay, have his toys and his bed. So Jaime left it. Forgot that he’d even heard his phone until he went inside to fix himself some lunch.

It had been a call from Brienne.

Which was strange; she usually called him in the evenings when she finished work, or in the mornings so they could wake up together. It had been six weeks since she had left Qarth. They had done it that way every day.

He pulled a can from the fridge and sat down with it on the verandah, his phone on his knee. Brienne would be at work now, he cursed himself. He’d missed her. He went to send her a message, and noticed she’d sent him one.

_Going to work_

it said.

_Will call when I finish. But still no period so I took a test. Looks like we should have been more careful that first night on the beach._

Jaime, heart in his mouth, scrolled further down. She’d sent a picture—a picture of the window on a pregnancy test, two bright blue lines intersecting the white square.

Jaime dropped his phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to auntie_social for the awesome prompt, I've had lots of fun writing it!
> 
> I'd also really like to make a sequel at some point if you would like that, auntie? I think it needs one!
> 
> Edited to add post reveal: I'm writing a sequel to this story, so if you enjoyed it, come and follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/) for updates and some sneak peaks!


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